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Estimated time of infection vs. confirmed infections

Following the ideas from Tomas Pueyo's Medium post "Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now" [1], we assume the average time from infection to death at 23 days [2]. The data is pulled from the COVID-19 Data Repository by Johns Hopkins CSSE [3] every hour. Countries with a minimnum of 1000 confirmed cases and 40 confirmed deaths are included in this analysis.

The time from infection to death is equal to the incubation period plus the time from symptoms to death. This is used to estimate the time of the infections that lead to the observed deaths. We take the last fatality rate per country (total_cases/total_deaths) to estimate the number of infections that are responsible for the observed deaths.

In the figures below, you can observe successive waves of infections (dashed), detections (black) and deaths (red) for each country. The upper panel shows the absolute number of events. The dashed lines show the estimated number of infections. The lower panel shows the normalized number of events. Here the temporal delay between the waves and the relative change between each other can be observed.

[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

[2] https://github.com/midas-network/COVID-19/tree/master/parameter_estimates/2019_novel_coronavirus

[3] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Iran
Spain
Colombia
Germany
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Romania
Czechia
Ecuador
Netherlands
Iraq
Hungary
Pakistan
Sweden
Philippines
Bolivia
Portugal
Switzerland
Egypt
Bulgaria
Morocco
Bangladesh
Austria
Saudi Arabia
Tunisia
Greece
Guatemala
Panama
Croatia
China
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Japan
Jordan
Israel
Serbia
Slovakia
Honduras
Moldova
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Burma
Georgia
Kazakhstan
Algeria
North Macedonia
Ireland
Paraguay
Lithuania
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Afghanistan
Ethiopia
Nepal
Lebanon
Denmark
Kenya
West Bank and Gaza
Libya
Sudan
Belarus
Oman
Kyrgyzstan
El Salvador
Nigeria
Kosovo
South Korea
Albania
Venezuela
Latvia
Kuwait
Australia
Syria
Zimbabwe
United Arab Emirates
Montenegro
Congo (Kinshasa)
Uzbekistan
Finland
Malaysia
Zambia
Luxembourg
Senegal
Norway
Cameroon
Angola
Mauritania
Eswatini
Bahrain
Ghana
Estonia
Jamaica
Malawi
Uruguay
Uganda
Namibia
Belize
Madagascar
Sri Lanka
Mozambique
Qatar
Malta
Haiti
Cyprus
Cuba
Rwanda
Cote d'Ivoire
Cabo Verde

Ahead of the curve

Some countries start testing the population earlier in the outbreak than others. The time delay between the wave of deaths and the wave of confirmed cases is indicative for how early a country is detecting new cases ahead of the increase of deaths. Earlier detection means a better chances for successful isolation of an infected person and treatment of the desease.

We measure the distance of the maximum of cumulative deaths and new deaths to the number of infections to estimate the progression of the infection across countries.

If, in the early phase of the infection wave, the number of deaths rises faster than the number of confirmed cases, the distance drops, indicating that

A comparison of countries with respect to their mean time for reponse is presented below.

To determine the above values, we plot the number of confirmed cases (solid black lines) and the number of deaths (dashed black lines). From this, we measure the distance of the day of maximum deaths (dashed red lines) to the day of confirmed cases at this y-value.

The distance is indicative for how fast the humber of confirmed cases increases comapred to the increase of the number of deaths.

US
Brazil
India
Mexico
United Kingdom
Italy
France
Russia
Iran
Spain
Colombia
Germany
Argentina
Peru
South Africa
Poland
Indonesia
Turkey
Ukraine
Belgium
Canada
Chile
Romania
Czechia
Ecuador
Netherlands
Iraq
Hungary
Pakistan
Sweden
Philippines
Bolivia
Portugal
Switzerland
Egypt
Bulgaria
Morocco
Bangladesh
Austria
Saudi Arabia
Tunisia
Greece
Guatemala
Panama
Croatia
China
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Japan
Jordan
Israel
Serbia
Slovakia
Honduras
Moldova
Slovenia
Azerbaijan
Armenia
Burma
Georgia
Kazakhstan
Algeria
North Macedonia
Ireland
Paraguay
Lithuania
Costa Rica
Dominican Republic
Afghanistan
Ethiopia
Nepal
Lebanon
Denmark
Kenya
West Bank and Gaza
Libya
Sudan
Belarus
Oman
Kyrgyzstan
El Salvador
Nigeria
Kosovo
South Korea
Albania
Venezuela
Latvia
Kuwait
Australia
Syria
Zimbabwe
United Arab Emirates
Montenegro
Congo (Kinshasa)
Uzbekistan
Finland
Malaysia
Zambia
Luxembourg
Senegal
Norway
Cameroon
Angola
Mauritania
Eswatini
Bahrain
Ghana
Estonia
Jamaica
Malawi
Uruguay
Uganda
Namibia
Belize
Madagascar
Sri Lanka
Mozambique
Qatar
Malta
Haiti
Cyprus
Cuba
Rwanda
Cote d'Ivoire
Cabo Verde